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Saturday, December 19, 2009

Jingle Boy Review

Eeek, a review!! Catch it before it runs away!

Jingle Boy by Keiran Scott

Published: September 23rd, 2003 by Delacorte
Genre: Either contemporary fiction or romantic comedy, I think. With Christmas thrown in for flavour... I'm not good at putting books in genres, am I?
Page Count: 230 in my paperback copy
Part of a series? Nope, it's a standalone.
Amazon link.

Summary (from
goodreads): Sixteen-year-old Paul Nicholas is a self-confessed Christmas fanatic. That’s why he’s so smitten with Sarah — a girl who smells like peppermint and thinks picking out presents to the strains of “Winter Wonderland” is the ultimate afternoon activity. But when he catches Sarah making out with Santa Claus at the Paramus Park mall, his dad’s over-the-top lights catch the Nicholas house on fire, and his mom gets fired from Fortunoff’s because of something he did for Christmas for Sarah, Paul gets caught in a downward spiral of holiday gloom. This year, the spirit of Scrooge has settled in — and it’s not going to be pretty. Or will the spirit of the holiday prevail?

Review: I'm going to say right off the bat that it's hard for these kind of books and me to click. That's not to say I don't like them, it's just that it's easier for me to find little flaws and nitpick at them. That said, I quite enjoyed this one. The writing was good, the characters were interesting and all in all it was a cute book.

Plot: It's 7:30am, I've been awake since 3am and this is a library book, so this section is going to suck a little. But you all love me so you don't care.

Anyways, the plot was kind of predictable, at least the romance part. The non-romance plot was rather unique, which was good. It balances that way, right?

Characters: Jingle Boy is narrated by Paul in first person, which I thought was neat, because I don't read that many books narrated by boys, and he had a very unique voice. One of my favourite quotes from him is when he mentioned How the Grinch Stole Christmas and adds, "(The original cartoon form in its purest form, not the psycho, acid-trip Jim Carey version.)"

My favourite character, though, was Holly, his best friend. She was just completely awesome. She hated Christmas because her father left her mother on Christmas Day for a department store elf. (Revealed on page 6, so it's not a spoiler.) When Paul told her that he was feeling down on Christmas (to paraphrase because I don't want want to reveal a plot point) he describes her as having "a look of maniacal glee on her face not unlike the one the Grinch sports after he comes up with the idea to steal Christmas from the Whos."

Cons, complaints, bad stuff, etc.: There was one particular part that bugged me. It's partly described in the summary, but if you don't want to read it, just skip over this part. Paul buys a necklace for Sarah from the jewelry store his mother works at. He gets her to ring it up, using her employee discount and VISA, and she gets fired when she has to return it without a receipt. Here's my issue with this. Most stores don't let you put yourself through. My mom's store doesn't even let her put through relatives. And you definitely cannot do it with a credit card purchase and employee discount. So it just... doesn't work. I know different stores have different policies, but I'd think that that one would be pretty universal.

PG-13 stuff: Not much, really. If you were to really nitpick, there might be a couple things, but there was no cursing or sex or violence or anything.

Cover comments: The cover picture I'm using here isn't identical to the one on the copy I read, but the only real difference is that the title is in green, not red. I just couldn't find a good picture of the paperback cover. I rather like the cover. Especially the boy. :P

Conclusion: It was a good, cute book, nothing spectacular, but good writing and characters and a sweet happy ending. It's the kind of book you read when you're looking for something light and cute (and funny!!). Plus it's a good read for the holidays, when most of us could use something light, right? Three and a half roses.



Other notes:

Apparently while reading this, I decided that I should run the world because, as I notes several times, boys are dumb and weird. I really wonder about myself sometimes.

Vocabulary: Expenditure. Definition: 1. the act of expending something, esp. funds; disbursement; consumption. 2. something that is expended; expense: Unnecessary expenditures include those for luxury items. (Thank you,
dictionary.com.)

Okay, that's everything.
Peace and cookies,
Laina

Friday, December 18, 2009

Fun Friday: Give Me Something to Sing About (24)

Crud, I forgot to do my Waiting on Wednesday post. Sorry guys!! Next week you'll get one, I promise. Guh, I haven't posted in a week... anyways.

Fun Friday: Give me something to sing about! is where you guys get to see a song or two I like or that I want to talk about each week. Thanks as always goes to J.J. at
Random Musings for help with the title.

Today I want to talk about two songs that I've had on my computer for ages but I only just really listened to recently. The first is Remembering Sunday by All Time Low.



I love the end of the song, don't you guys?

And the second one is Hush by Automatic Loveletter.




Extra coolness points if you A.) know how these songs are connected and B.) can guess what book this makes me think of.

Okay, so, I'm really tired, so that's everything for this Friday.
Peace and cookies,
Laina

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Fun Friday: Give Me Something to Talk About (23) - late but Gleeful

Fun Friday: Give me something to sing about! is where you guys get to see a song or two I like or that I want to talk about each week. Thanks as always goes to J.J. at Random Musings for help with the title.

I know it's late, but I forgot it was Friday. Whoops. :P

Anyways, I know that I've talked about mashups and covers before (have I talked about remixes? Maybe next week) but they're on my mind right now because I have the second Glee CD on repeat. If you don't know what Glee is, you've been living under a rock in another universe.

But on the off chance you might not have heard this song, here's the Glee cover of No Air, which is of course originally performed by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown.



And now, because it's my birthday tomorrow, I'm going to leave you guys with a Smile.



Peace and cookies,
Laina

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Waiting on Wednesday (28)

Waiting on Wednesday is, of course, brought to us by the lovely Jill at Breaking the Spine. And it's only a little late! It's only been Thursday for a couple hours.

Now, I promised you guys a real post this week, and that's what I'm going to give you!! A real post with two completely different books, one fantasy and one contemporary fiction, and links and everything!

First up is:

Stalker Girl by Rosemary Graham - Release date August 10th, 2010 from Viking Juvenile

How do you know when you’ve crossed the line between curiosity and obsession?

Carly never meant to become a stalker. She just wanted to find out who Brian started dating after he dumped her. But a little harmless online research turns into a quick glance, and that turns into an afternoon of watching. Soon Carly is putting all of her energy into following Brian’s new girlfriend—all of the sadness she feels about her mom’s recent breakup, all of the anger she feels over being pushed aside by her dad while he prepares for his new wife’s new baby. When Carly’s stalking is discovered in the worst possible way by the worst possible person, she is forced to acknowledge her problem and the underlying issues that led to it
.

(Summary from goodreads.)

I love photography. I'm not great at it, but I love reading about it (which was one reason I loved Bad Girls Don't Die) so I really love this cover, which was the first thing that caught my eye in a
Books to Pine for post by The Story Siren. And then the summary just sounds incredible. What do you guys think?

You can check out the author's
website or her blog for more information about her.

Now, my next choice I accidentally put on my list twice (and it wasn't that long of a list), so you can tell how much I want to read it!

Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready - Release date May 18th, 2009 from Simon Pulse

When her boyfriend dies a most untimely death, Aura who can see ghosts - is forced to reconsider her relationship with the living and dead in Shade.

(Summary from goodreads.)

It's not the best summary in the world, but it does make you wonder, doesn't it? Something about the "most" just makes me go hmm. It sounds to me like it could be very unique and interesting.

You can check out the author's
website here for more information on her books.

From what I read on her website or blog, can't remember which, this isn't quite the final cover, but it's really close, the tagline just needs to be added. And I found this picture:



It's the full jacket. Isn't it GORGEOUS? Click it to enlarge it, it's huge and absolutely beautiful.

Okay, that's it for Waiting on Wednesday for this week!
Peace and cookies,
Laina

Friday, December 4, 2009

Fun Friday: Give Me Something to Sing About (22)

Fun Friday: Give me something to sing about! is where you guys get to see a song or two I like or that I want to talk about each week. Thanks as always goes to J.J. at Random Musings for help with the title.

My song this week has a bit of an interesting story. A friend of mine posted some of the lyrics on Facebook and they sounded familiar, so I looked them up and saw that they were from a Framing Hanley song. And I know that
Samantha really likes Framing Hanley, so I looked the song up on YouTube and got ever so slightly addicted to it. The only sucky thing is that YouTube doesn't like the internet I'm on and is really hard to load and Imeem doesn't have the full song... but it's not that big of a deal.

Anyways! This is Hear Me Now by Framing Hanley. Enjoy!!



Okay, I hope you enjoyed the song!
Peace and cookies,
Laina

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Waiting on Wednesday (27)

Waiting on Wednesday is, of course, brought to us by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

This is a really really special WoW for me because I love this series and I just found out about the cover. :D


Kiss of Death by Rachel Caine (Number Eight in the Morganville Vampire series)

The release date is May 4th, 2010 and I can't find a summary. But the cover is GORGEOUS. I love it and I can't wait to read this, especially now that I have the other books in the series. So YAY!!!!

Sorry for the crummy post, guys, it's 11pm and I'm tired. My to do list is very long :P

Next week I plan on having a scheduled post, so it'll be better, I promise!!

Peace and cookies,
Laina